IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mth/jeijnl/v3y2017i1p170188.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ontology of Public Health in University Curriculum: Exploring Basic Elements of an Interdisciplinary Field of Knowledge

Author

Listed:
  • Zahirul Islam

Abstract

Public health has constituted itself as a distinct academic discipline. The present paper attempts to understand ontology of this discipline. A study has recently been carried out which concerns, first, conceptualization of ontology of public health, secondly, nature of public health, and thirdly, curriculum development. Ontology is a philosophical doctrine that refers to an understanding about the basic elements theorized about. As the paper unveils, the tenet of public health is that the health state is not a matter of ‘individual’ only; rather this is a question of the ‘collective’ too. Diverse aspects take forms of intellectual construction which are transformed into the subject of the discipline. They are categorized as worldview, theory, methodology, instrumentation, and application. The constructions are internalized in the discipline’s nature to be ‘epistemic’, ‘interdisciplinary’ and ‘componential’. In order to produce knowledge, the discipline involves an epistemic process consisting of priori and posteriori approaches. Public health, though the prevailing thoughts and practices are derived from biomedical paradigms, contains an interdisciplinary trait that draws from the fields of formal, organic, inorganic and social sciences. The discipline comes to be appeared as an integral whole being componential. The aforementioned categories of intellectual constructions are viewed as the basic elements of public health. Elements exist and operate in a center/periphery binary relationship. Center (worldview), while it holds the whole structure of the discipline together, limits the movement of rest elements and keeps them in the periphery. The paper concludes by pointing out few issues for developing curriculum for universities.

Suggested Citation

  • Zahirul Islam, 2017. "Ontology of Public Health in University Curriculum: Exploring Basic Elements of an Interdisciplinary Field of Knowledge," Journal of Educational Issues, Macrothink Institute, vol. 3(1), pages 170188-1701, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:mth:jeijnl:v:3:y:2017:i:1:p:170188
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.macrothink.org/journal/index.php/jei/article/download/10478/9428
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.macrothink.org/journal/index.php/jei/article/view/10478
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • R00 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General - - - General
    • Z0 - Other Special Topics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mth:jeijnl:v:3:y:2017:i:1:p:170188. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Technical Support Office (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://jei.macrothink.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.